INPE was founded in the early 1960s, motivated by the expectations that arose around the first space explorations made by the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1957, the Soviets launched the first satellite into space, Sputnik. A year later, it was the United States’ turn to put Explorer into Earth’s orbit. At the time, two engineering students from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), Fernando de Mendonça and Júlio Alberto de Morais Coutinho, in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory of the United States Navy, built a tracking station that was able to capture signals from the two satellites. INPE’s history of major initiatives reflects the proactive stance of its scientific community, which gradually expanded the institution’s scope of action in response to the demands of society and scientific and technological challenges. The expertise acquired in its main areas of activity – Space and Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental and Meteorological Sciences, and Space Engineering and Technologies – was established, on the one hand, thanks to international scientific cooperation. On the other hand, it benefited from the creation of a scientific and technological community of excellence that was established under the strategy of training in the most advanced research centers and by attracting researchers from abroad to work at the institution.

The Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), through the national contract between CAPES and IEEE has an unlimited open access agreement with IEEE that enables researchers to publish articles as open access without open access fees in all IEEE fully and hybrid open access journals. The agreement applies to all original research articles accepted for publication between 5 November 2024 – 30 October 2027. To benefit from this agreement, the corresponding author has to be affiliated with Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). Please use the correct institution name and your institutional email address during submi​​ssion. It is recommended for authors to select the CC BY 4.0 license. The open access funding request will be approved by an OA administrator at CAPES. Overlength page charges or color fees are not covered by the agreement and will be charged to authors.